> On Mon, May 10, 1999 at 09:22:18AM -0400, Nils Lohner wrote:
> > I have a question along the same lines, but in a different area. I'm
> > pretty sure situations like this have come up before, but I don't know
> > how they were handled. This is just from a discussion I had with
> > someone.
> >
> > Can you take GPL'ed code and use it with a closed source program?
> > i.e. take the GPL'ed program do_everything and someone wants to write a
> > library for it that's do_one_more_thing but keep the library closed, is
> > that OK? If they want to distribute and sell that, they distribute the
No. This is the entire point of the LGPL.
> > source code to the GPL part (with modifications), and the binary
> > (executable), right? I would assume it is, but modifications etc. to
> > the original GPL code must be made public. Am I missing something here,
> > or is that about the extent of it? Or is that illegal under the GPL and
> > the entire source code must be made public because its used with some
> > GPL'ed code?
That's right. This has been enforced before -- the famous(ish) example is
when NeXT wanted to release the Objective C portion of GNU CC as a
collection of object files and RMS made them rlease it as GPL'ed source
instead.
> I suggest going to ftp.be.com and checking out the /pub/gnu directory.
> They have done exactly this with their boot loader. It uses some parts of
> the Linux kernel (those parts are released in source), and some parts are
> proprietary (thos parts are only in .o object format). So you can
> conceivably rebuild the boot loader with the source and objects provided.
If I am not very much mistaken, this is illegal and something should be done
about it.
--phouchg
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